A US artificial intelligence firm is opening a Cambridge R&D centre after receiving a $10m cash injection from some of the city's biggest names

Swim.ai, which specialises in edge computing, will also use the cash to accelerate development of its SWIM EDX platform. The funding round has been led by Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), while Arm has also made an investment alongside the company's existing backers.

Swim.ai is coming to Cambridge

The San Jose firm provides edge intelligence software, which combines local data processing with analytics and machine learning to deliver real-time business insights. It is hoped the new AI R&D centre will help it capitalise on the expertise available in the Cambridge cluster, to accelerate product development, and expand sales and marketing into new areas.

For the uninitiated, edge computing is an emerging technology for processing data on sensors and control devices in a network closest to where that data is generated. Processing data at the edge, where it is captured, rather than transmitting that data to the cloud, reduces latency and bandwidth, and reduces cloud storage and computing costs.

Andrew Williamson of CIC said: “Swim.ai has created an industry leading solution that will change the way manufacturers, service providers, enterprises, cities, IoT vendors and others consume and utilise data at the edge. The Swim team is helping customers overcome edge data processing challenges and efficiently build edge processing applications. We are delighted to support Rusty, Chris and the team at SWIM.AI.”

In April, Swim announced the general availability of its edge software solution SWIM EDX, which enables customers to analyse high volumes of streaming edge data and deliver real-time insights that can easily be shared and visualised. It comes with a developer software development kit (or SDK) makes it simple to create new real-time edge applications

The company's existing customers operate in sectors such as manufacturing, smart cities, IoT and logistics.

Rusty Cumpston, co-founder and CEO of Swim.ai, added, “Demand for the EDX software is rapidly increasing, driven by our software’s unique ability to analyse and reduce data, share new insights instantly peer-to-peer locally at the ‘edge’ on existing equipment. Efficiently processing edge data and enabling insights to be easily created and delivered with the lowest latency are critical needs for any organisation. We are excited to expand Swim's operations in Cambridge, and look forward to partnering with our new investors to shape the future of real-time analytics at the edge.”

Williamson and Arm's Damon Civin will join the Swim board following the investment.

“Swim’s ability to analyse data and apply machine learning at the edge unlocks new IoT use cases by unleashing data that was previously too difficult, slow or expensive to send to the cloud for analysis,” said Civin, who is principal data scientist at Arm. “Their solution complements the Arm Mbed IoT Device Management Platform and our mission of enabling organisations to seamlessly obtain and derive meaning from their IoT data.”